Digital design to boost pharmaceutical industry

University of Leeds researchers are part of a project to transform the UK’s pharmaceutical industry by introducing new digital design processes.

The £20.4
million ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics) project is a major four-year collaboration between the Government, industry and universities.

It is expected
to reduce the development time and cost of innovative medicines and improve the
competitiveness of the UKs pharmaceuticals sector.

Professor
Kevin Roberts, Brotherton Professor of Chemical
Engineering at the University of Leeds, who will lead the Leeds team, said: The
days of the blockbuster drug are numbered. Many medicines that are coming
through are more targeted and we need a streamlined development process to get
them to market.

Instead of doing
a lot of very expensive trial and error in the lab and in manufacturing design,
ADDoPT will be developing the use of computer modelling and design tools to
help plan the design and manufacturing process from raw materials through formulation,
manufacturing and quality testing. The idea is to identify and eliminate non-viable
drugs as early as possible in the process and concentrate time and resources on
the right things.

Professor
Roberts added: The University of Leeds is committed to applying world leading
research to real-world problems. This project brings together two
strategic research areas for the Universityin high value engineering and
healthand we expect to have a major economic impact.

Alison Clough,
Acting Chief Executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical
Industry (ABPI), said: We welcome the Governments commitment to continuing to
develop the UKs life sciences sector. This project will help to put the UK in
a position to make innovative medicines available to UK patients more quickly
by futureproofing our advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. By reducing
the risks associated with the manufacture of medicines we can provide the UK
with a competitive advantage in a globally significant sector.

Partners
include the major pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca
and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The University
of Leeds, University of Cambridge, the Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in
Continuous Manufacturing and Crystallisation (CMAC) at the University of
Strathclyde, the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre and the STFC Hartree
Centre are the leading academic contributors. Leeds' team will receive £4.5 million funding.

The project is
coordinated by Process Systems Enterprise Ltd, a supplier of advanced process
modelling technology, and is part funded under the Governments Advanced
Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative.

It is
supported by the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP), which was
jointly established by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
(ABPI) and the BioIndustry Association (BIA), to ensure UK competitiveness in
medicines manufacturing. The process engineering firm Perceptive Engineering
Ltd and the process design specialist Britest Ltd will also play key roles in
the project.

Project Lead
Sean Bermingham of Process Systems Enterprise said: By building on UK
excellence in process modelling, optimisation and control, we can give UK
pharmaceutical development and manufacturing a genuine competitive advantage in
this globally significant sector.